The
Penguins
News
News About Our Penguins
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Issue 35, Volume 16
$1.99
Why Penguins Quit Flying
H
By Megan Gannon, News Editor
umans spent centuries
conspiring to fly, so it
might be hard to imagine
that any creature would
give up the skill, and yet
penguins waddle among
us. A new study helps confirm that these
seabirds traded flight to become better
swimmers.
Penguins have a litany of physical
features that make them energy-efficient
underwater. For instance, their shortened
wingspans lessen drag; their dense wing
bones make them less buoyant; and their
bulky bodies help them stay insulated
and dive deeper. Unlike other aquatic
Top Stories:
• Why Don’t Penguins Feet
Freeze On Ice
• World’s Oldest Penguin
Reaches 36
• Penguins Wear a Shield of
Cold Air in Winter
• Penguins: The Math Behind
The Huddle
• Fun Facts About Penguins
birds that paddle
underwater with
their webbed feet,
penguins beat
their wings to
propel themselves
far below the
surface. Emperor penguins can
even go to depths
greater than 1,500
feet (450 meters),
lasting 20 minutes on a single breath.
But stubby wings and extra pounds
don’t make it easy to lift off into the air.
Researchers believe that at some point in
penguin evolution, these diving enhancements made flying so costly that it ceased
to be a sensible option for the birds, rendering them flightless.
Why Don’t Penguins Feet Freeze On Ice
As cute as tuxedo-patterned penguins
would look sporting oversize loafers, foot
wear is not part of the dress code for these
warm-blooded birds. Bare feet prevent
these stately ice emperors from burning up
in their suits.
A little biological ingenuity keeps the
extremities from icing over. Certain arteries
in the penguin leg can adjust blood flow
in response to foot temperature, feeding
the foot just enough blood to keep it a few
degrees above freezing.
Most of the penguin body is kept cozy
by its warm, waterproof plumage. Beneath
the skin, blubber adds to the insulation.
Together, fat and feathers work so well that
a careless bird might overheat on a sunny
day. The naked beak and feet allow heat
to escape, helping the body to maintain a
steady temperature.
Penguins: The Math Behind The Huddle
By Katharine Gammon
In the icy freeze of Antarctica, Emperor
penguins huddle for warmth – and they stay
toasty even though they constantly rotate
positions in the scrum. Now, researchers
have modeled the workings of the huddle,
looking at the system through the lens of
fluid dynamics.
Francois Blanchette, an applied mathematician at the University of California,
Merced, says that it took a bit of serendipity
to bring him into the topic.
wind blowing in all these movies, and you
can see snowflakes -- I thought maybe
there’s a way to get involved in the idea of
penguin huddling.”
“I was watching those penguin movies
and got to thinking: I work with similar
things,” Blanchette said. “You can see the
Biologists have long observed how hundreds of penguins gather together in order
to resist the Antarctic temperatures of -60…
Continued on Page 3…
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World’s Oldest Penguin Reaches 36
By Jane Wharton
Missy the penguin has waddled forward to claim the crown as the oldest in
the world after reaching 36 years old – a staggering 108 in human years.
She might be a tough old
bird, but that hasn’t stopped
her waddling her way into
the record books.
King penguins – Aptenodytes patagonicus in Latin – are
only expected to live up to 26
years in captivity, much more
than their 15-20 years life expectancy in the wild.
Missy the penguin will
claim the crown as the oldest
in the world after reaching
36 years old - a staggering
108 in human years.
King penguin Missy arrived at the Birdland wildlife
park in Gloucestershire when
she was at least five years
old in 1982. And despite losing the vision in one eye she
is still the leader of the colony
today.
Despite her age her keepers had no
idea that she was the world’s oldest until
a zoo in Denmark claimed the title with a
Gentoo penguin two years younger than
Missy spends most of her
time with her partner of 18
years, Seth, who is thought to be
34 years old and had a starring
role in the 1992 film Batman
Returns.
Credit: Image courtesy of Vanessa Santos
Missy. Staff at the park in Bourton-on-theWater are now planning to send her details
to Guinness World Records to prove her
claim to the title.
Simon Blackwell, park
manager, said: “The Danish
zoo recently announced they
believed that a Gentoo penguin
there was the world’s oldest living
penguin having reached the age of
34 in May. Although we cannot categorically age Missy we do know she was
an adult when she came to Birdland and
king penguins take five years to become
fully mature.
Penguins’ Explicit Sex Acts Shocked Polar Explorer
By Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Managing
H
idden for nearly 100
years for being too
“graphic,” a report of
“hooligan” behaviors,
including sexual coercion, by Adelie penguins observed during
Captain Scott’s 1910 polar expedition has
been uncovered and interpreted.
The naughty notes were rediscovered
recently at the Natural History Museum
in Tring, in England, and published in the
recent issue of the journal Polar Record.
George Levick, a surgeon and the medical officer on Scott’s famous 1910-1913
expedition to the South Pole, called the
Terra Nova expedition, detailed his account
of the penguins’ seemingly odd behaviors
in a four-page pamphlet “Sexual Habits of
Adélie Penguins” in 1915. (The expedition,
led by Navy Captain Robert Falcon Scott,
would arrive at the South Pole to discover
that Amundsen had beaten them there.)
“As it was boldly headed ‘Not for Publication’ it immediately caught my eye,”
Douglas Russell, who discovered the pamphlet, told LiveScience. “As the curator of
birds eggs and nests at the Natural History
2
Museum and having had a long-standing
interest in polar research, I knew of George
Murray Levick and that this was, as the
header suggested, fascinating but totally
unpublished work.”
During their journey, Levick observed
and recorded details on the lives of the
Adélie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae) colony
on Cape Adare. He even recorded the very
first penguin at the colony — the world’s
largest of this species — on Oct. 13, 1911.
“Some of the things he noticed profoundly shocked him,” Russell said. For
instance, Levick noted the penguins’
autoerotic tendencies, and the seemingly
aberrant behavior of young unpaired males
and females, including necrophilia, sexual coercion, sexual and physical abuse of
chicks, non-procreative animal sex and
homosexual behaviors.
At the time, Levick was so shocked
by what he saw he recorded the events in
Greek to disguise the information, at one
point writing, “There seems to be no crime
too low for these penguins.”
For instance, on Nov. 10, 1911, Levick
wrote in Greek (translated here): “This
afternoon I saw a most extraordinary site.
A Penguin was actually engaged in sodomy
upon the body of a dead white throated bird
of its own species. The act occurred a full
minute, the position taken up by the cock
differing in no respect from that of ordinary
copulation, and the whole act was gone
through down to the final depression of the
cloaca.”
Levick described penguins that waddled about the colony’s outskirts terrorizing
any straying chicks as “little knots of hooligans” in his pamphlet. “The crimes which
they commit are such as to find no place in
this book, but it is interesting indeed to note
that, when nature intends them to find employment, these birds, like men, degenerate
in idleness.”
Homosexual behaviors in animals are
no longer cause for hiding data, or even
a blush.Plenty of animals are out of the
closet, so to speak, from dolphins and
killer whales to bonobos and greylag geese.
Some estimates put the number of animal
species that practice same-sex coupling at
1,500.
Penguins Wear a Shield of Cold Air in Winter
By Jennifer Viegas
E
mperor penguins “wear” an
invisible shield of cold air that
helps to prevent body heat loss,
allowing the flightless birds to
survive the sub-zero temps of
Antarctica, a new study finds.
The report, published in the journal of
Biology Letters, demonstrates just how
hardy the birds are.
“In most birds, plumage is able to
resist the flow of heat, such that surface
temperature is normally a few degrees
above the ambient temperature,” wrote
Dominic McCafferty of the University of
Glasgow and his colleagues. For emperor penguins, however, “During clear sky
conditions, most outer surfaces of the body
were colder than surrounding sub-zero air.
In these conditions, the feather surface will
paradoxically gain heat by convection from
surrounding air.”
It’s as though the penguin were in a
mini natural convection oven set at low.
NEWS: Penguins Do the Wave to
Stay Warm
“Penguin plumage provides more
than 80 percent of total insulation, and
is highly resistant to wind penetration,”
according to the authors.
They add that the “thick, scaly skin”
of penguins “affords good protection”
from cooling and contact with ice. This
species of penguin also has a relatively
small bill in proportion to overall body
size, which also helps to minimize heat
loss.
When penguins stand a certain way,
and gather together in a group, they
further reduce heat loss.
Credit: Image courtesy of Pixabay.com
Scientist fear that global warming & the
loss of sea ice could be particularly devastating for emperor penguins like
these.
NEWS: You’re Stressing Out The
Penguins
Penguins: The Math Behind The Huddle
Penguins: The Math Behind The Huddle Continued …
F and gusts of 100 mph. Other researchers
showed that the penguins move from place
to place within the packed group, moving
outside penguins to the warmer spots and
dispersing the heat loss.
fectly rational beings,” said Blanchette.
His research, done with two students, was
published Friday in the online journal PLoS
ONE.
“Huddles are highly dynamic and not as
symmetrical as one might expect,” Wienecke said, who had a biological shape in
mind for the huddle. “The outline of a huddle can make it look more like an ameoba
than a circle so to a point openings often
exist, depending on the number of birds in a
huddle.”
Inside the huddle, temperatures have
been known to reach about 70 degrees F.
Huddling is particularly important, as the
penguins don’t eat for up to 115 days and
need to conserve as much energy as possible.
Blanchette took the idea a step further
and created math models of the shape
and dynamics of the huddle. He found
that when penguins try to maximize their
warmth -- the coldest ones move to the
best available spot -- and the huddle takes
the form of a cigar.
Blanchette soon realized that the oblong
shape didn’t match up with what he saw in
penguin movies, so he added another factor:
random heat loss to every penguin. That
created a rounder huddle with a smattering
of holes in it, with a bit of elongation in the
direction of the wind.
“It’s not surprising that there is a lot
of randomness, as penguins are not per-
penguins, said the model was interesting.
She added that reality may be more complex
than the model, which assumes there are
few gaps in the huddle, suggests.
Credit: Image courtesy of Pixabay.com
The team was surprised to find that
even though each penguin was out to help
itself, the cold ended up being shared nearly
equally over the whole group.
“If you wanted to design a process that’s
fair, this is a close approximation,” said
Blanchette.
Barbara Wienecke, a biologist with the
Australian Antarctic Division who studies
Penguins huddles aren’t the only
shape-shifting animal grouping -- other
biological masses have dynamics that can
be modeled like fluids, said Blanchette. He
points to colonies of bacteria that change
shape in response to food or toxins.
In addition, the model could be programmed into robots who need to swarm
and huddle to survive.
“Imagine a group of robots caught in a
sandstorm, and they might want to rotate
who is exposed,” Blanchette said. A biology-based model could prescribe behavior to
maximize survival for a group faced with a
nasty environmental situation.
3
Fun Facts About Penguins
By Michelle Bryner
Basic Penguin Facts:
Penguins are one of about 40 species
of flightless birds, a category that also
includes the ostrich, rhea, cassowary, emu
and kiwi. Penguins are neither the smallest
nor the largest of the lot, but some may
think of them as the cutest.
These waddling birds are known for
their white bellies and dark-colored backs
and wings, resembling a tuxedo. This
distinct coloring is thought to hide penguins from predators in the sea. Besides its
coloring, a penguin’s body is designed for
swimming, and includes tapering at both
ends of the body for hydrodynamics, paddle-like wings and web-shaped feet.
While penguins can spend as much as
75 percent of their time at sea, all penguins
give birth to their young on land or sea ice.
Where Penguins Live:
Penguins live almost exclusively in the
Southern Hemisphere, on Antarctica, New
Zealand, and the southern tips of South
America and Africa. The slight exception is
the Galápagos penguin; one of the islands
they dwell on just crosses the equator, so
they occasionally visit the Northern Hemisphere.
Penguins typically live on islands or
other secluded areas where there is minimal
threat from land predators.
The ideal climate for these flightless
birds depends on the species. For example,
the Galápagos penguins live on tropical
islands while the Emperor and Adélie penguins are found on the ice of Antarctica.
Conservation Status:
Threatened to Endangered
Of the 17 penguin species on Earth, 13
are considered either threatened or endangered, with some species on the brink of
extinction.
The largest penguin subspecies is the
Emperor penguin — an average Emperor
penguin stands about 45 inches tall and
weighs 90 pounds. The smallest is the fairy
penguin, also known as little blue penguin
— these birds stand 10 inches (25 cm) tall
on average and weigh about 2.5 pounds
(1.1 kg).
Penguins eat only seafood, including
krill, squid and various fish. Because they
don’t have teeth, penguins swallow their
prey whole. They use their pointy beaks to
catch the prey and their textured tongues to
hold onto the food while they swallow it.
Penguin species that are experiencing declining populations include: the
erect-crested penguin, a New Zealand
native that has lost about 70 percent of
its population over the last 20 years; the
Galápagos penguin, which has experienced
a population decline of over 50 percent
since the 1970s, and faces a 30-percent
chance of extinction in this century, according to Tony LaCasse, spokesman for the
New England Aquarium; the yellow-eyed
penguin of New Zealand; the northern
rockhopper penguin; and the African penguin.
Penguins face several threats to their
survival, the most common of which are
pollution and human encroachment to their
habitats, as well as new mammalian predators such as dogs, cats and weasels that
have been introduced by humans to penguins’ environments. Other threats include
commercial fishing, as penguins are sometimes caught as a byproduct, oil dumping
and algae blooms, which wreak havoc on
their food supply and habitats.
In addition, climate change appears
to be playing a large role in the declining
population of penguin species. As waters
warm, the ice that makes up their habitat
melts, leaving limited space available for
penguins to breed.
Odd facts:
The stereotypical male and female
parenting roles are reversed for Emperor
penguins. The male penguin incubates his
mate’s egg while she goes out to feed. And
once the little chick hatches, the male penguin feeds it with milk that he produces in
his esophagus.
To keep warm in their chilly environment, penguins’ bodies are insulated with
a thick layer of blubber and covered in
waterproof feathers.
Penguins shed their feathers and grow
new ones every year during a two- to threeweek period. (Penguins spend a lot of time
grooming in order to keep their down coats
in tip-top shape for an entire year.)
The Magellanic penguin is named after
Ferdinand Magellan, who first spotted them
in 1520 and who also gave his name to the
Straits of Magellan at the southern tip of
South Africa, where the penguins dwell.
While most penguin species are not
sexually dimorphic (male and female
penguins look alike), during mating season
you might be able to distinguish the female
penguin from the muddy footprints on her
back left by males during mating.
Five Penguins Chicks Hatch at Belfast Zoo
The Belfast Zoological Gardens had a
flurry of new birds recently with the hatching of five penguin chicks.
In March this year, Belfast Zoo welcomed 40 Edinburgh penguins to the
penguin enclosure, while essential maintenance work was carried out to their Edinburgh pool.
Their arrival coincided with the start of
the penguin breeding season and keepers
4
immediately began to install nests in the
enclosure. The male gentoo penguins then
set to work to fill the nests with pebbles
and stones. The nests are so prized by females that often male penguins can obtain
a mate by offering the female a nice pebble.
“Edinburgh Zoo contacted us when
they realised that maintenance work needed to be carried out to their pool. We were
already home to 20 gentoo penguins and
we were more than happy to accommodate
the ‘holidaying’ birds,” said zoo manager,
Mark Challis. “We take part in more than
90 breeding programs but this has been an
especially successful partnership between
the two zoos, as five of Edinburgh Zoo’s
female birds have welcomed chicks so far.
We are hopeful that we will soon hear the
pitter patter of many more little feet in the
penguin enclosure.”